Got my American Express bill in the mail today and it said they are raising my interest rate 6% in Nov due to my FICO score dropping. WTH? I checked my TransUnion score via another credit card I have (free service) and nothing bad is on there - no new inquiries, no new accounts, nothing I didn’t recognize, no late payments (ever - any account), no bad reports - yet the score dropped 32 points since August 18th.
Any idea why?
I called AE and asked about it - they won’t budge - even though I’ve been with them since 1995 and have never had a missed payment. I use them pretty much monthly for our travel and a few other assorted things - mainly to get Amazon points. I actually have close to 11,000 in credit available from them, so they can’t think I was that great of a risk.
No huge deal as I’ll cancel the card as soon as I figure out what I want to use my Amazon points on. I’m not that loyal to any company to put up with a high interest rate. That will be well before Nov, but I’ll admit to being stymied.
Anyone else have their score drop so dramatically without any obvious cause? Has some formula they used changed? I checked H’s credit too and his hasn’t really budged. It went up 3 points during the same time frame that mine dropped.
Naturally I can’t find a phone number to call TransUnion and ask.
Well, Sears and Bon Ton closed, so I no longer have those cards, but I very rarely used them anyway. I don’t think any others have changed. I don’t have all that many TBH. I culled quite a few just keeping my favorites a few years back. I try to keep those I have in use sort of regularly.
Nothing recent other than Sears and Bon Ton - if those count.
How would they determine this? I did have medical testing done during that time period - cardiac - but I would think the results of “best I’ve seen in someone your age” would be a plus, not cause a drop. Do they only see that testing was done and not the results?
Hmm, I have more available credit than H does, but his name wasn’t on the store cards, so I suppose that could hit it. It seems pretty odd though as my available credit > 25K. The store cards couldn’t have been a high percentage of it, but I really don’t know what their limit was TBH.
Available credit hasn’t changed much - and what has changed went up, not down. I had a couple of higher medical bills on one (not AE) that got paid off in Sept as we got reimbursed.
@chercheur Thanks. Perhaps it was the medical bills coupled with Sears and Bon Ton closing. There’s never been collections or bankruptcy or late payments or new applications in the past two years, etc.
I suppose I should wait and see - then call AE again. It seems closing them could hurt my credit even more, but I’ll admit I’m pissed at what they’re doing when absolutely nothing is off - esp with them. They are fee free, so with a zero balance it wouldn’t kill me to keep them even at a high rate. It’d just annoy me.
We had a temporary drop due to a rarely-used card lowering our credit limit (it was a back-up card we only used about twice a year). The next month our score was back to normal. I don’t think AE will be sympathetic at this point; wait until your score goes back up and then call.
If you pay your bills in full every month, why do you care about the interest rate? It wouldn’t affect you. Agree it’s annoying, but it really is moot.
Ive found my credit rating as it shows up on my bank account and different credit cards (Visa, Discover, AmEx) does bounce around a bit from month to month (though not that huge a swing) if Ive had big purchases or something. But it matters not.
Amex tracks your spending patterns and categorizes them. Do you pay your medical bills with your Amex? If the amounts ramp up steadily, and they see a pattern…
If your credit score remains in the 700s and 800s, it’s considered pretty good and I don’t think it should really affect much. How is it affecting you? If it’s not, don’t stress over it. It can bounce around for no particular reason. If you’re using a higher % of your credit, that does lower your score. We have credit scores near the highest available, but we have been rejected by companies when we applied for credit cards when our credit bureau scores were frozen by us (we could have unfrozen but weren’t all that interested in getting the cards).
I only know what my credit score is because the USAA account shows a credit score number when I’m online checking my USAA account for other things–we do have insurance, a credit card and checking account with them.
That’s true–age of your credit score matters as well. We have some credit cards about as old as our kids, so they have very old credit scores (we made them authorized users). If we were to close those cards, it’s likely the credit scores would drop. In your case, if the cards are closed even through no action or inaction by you, that could lower your credit scores.
@jym626 Simply because it bugs me. I don’t care to patronize cards with high interest rates. I make exception for store cards because there are usually perks to make it worth it like lower costs on items (Kohl’s, Walmart, etc), but for a “typical” card like Visa, MC, or AE? Esp when I’ve been a loyal customer for 23 years. One would think they could look at that rather than be black and white based upon numbers. They don’t need my business. There are others out there if I want a replacement.
@BunsenBurner I’d have to check to see if I put any of the medical stuff on it a month or two ago. I don’t recall. I have two saved in my computer and could have chosen either one since I paid them from afar. I know I usually put travel expenses on it. I will need to add a different card for one of my main travel sites, but that can be done, of course.
Even so, credit cards get paid off in an estate if someone dies, don’t they? There’d be no risk to them if I got hit by a bus.
If the estate has the money to pay the deceased’s debts. You may know that, but the lenders do not. People with credit card debt may be net debtors, so lenders of unsecured debt in that case would lose money.